How Left 4 Dead 2 taught me to be a coward.

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Surely my life isn’t all work and no play – I occassionally get to spend some time decapitating zombies in the very amazing Left 4 Dead 2.  This is a game that may as well have been written explicitly for me.  I enjoyed (and conquered most of the Achievements for) Left 4 Dead, so I was worried that L4D2 wouldn’t crank up the tension enough.

Au contraire.

I’ve had more pants-crapping, adrenaline-fueled moments in L4D2 than I can admit to.  The additional of melee weapons makes the game exceptional visceral.  There’s something to be said for sniping your way carefully to safety – there’s something else entirely, AMAZINGLY FUN to be said about carving your way out of a rampaging horde of rabid zombies with a machete, or the satisfying *crunk* of head colliding with cricket bat, then detaching and flying into the distance.

L4D2 is so good, in fact, that its the first game I’ve played where cowardice seemed like the most viable option.  Recently, I was playing online with some friends (including Story Games guru Andy Kitkowski), going through the Swamp Fever campaign.  The climax of this campaign is a showdown at a gothic Antebellum mansion – and it’s easily the hardest of the endgame scenarios in both versions of Left 4 Dead.  The infected pour in from every direction at long range, and even with a well-knit group chances are that you’ll get overwhelmed.

We managed to make it through (barely) and absconded from the upper balcony to the gates where a boat is due to arrive and holed up there for the last couple of waves of infected, waiting for the real killers – two (!) Tanks – big, beefy ‘roid-raging zombies that can knock you into next week.  This is the only place I’ve ever seen such a thing, and the first time I realized there were two Tanks, I almost gave up the idea of finishing the campaign.  But again, we soldiered through and (barely) survived intact.  The gate blew, and I ran along with the Rochelle-player out into the water.  It was then that I noticed Coach went down.

I was almost on the boat, but I stopped, knelt and pointed my sniper rifle back to see what was going on.  Nick was still there as well, and the two of them were being swarmed.  I had the sniper rifle (so much fun!) and started cutting through the swarm by shooting just over Coach’s head.  It looked like Nick was going to be able to get him up, but then a big rock came out from nowhere and knocked him to the ground as well – the calling card of another Tank attack.  So I had a choice – try to wade in and save them both (possible, but unlikely) or save my own virtual ass and get on the boat.

Normally, I play with a chip on my shoulder.  I aim to win – not just survive.  But this was the first time I’d gotten to the damn boat, and that elusive Achievement called to me.  Then I watched another wave of infected burst through the gates, past the now-dead Coach and nearly-dead Nick.  I turned and ran like the coward I was.  The feeling as the credits rolled wasn’t mixed – I was elated.  And not because I’d actually survived – but because a game had given me such a visceral shock, caused me such trouble, given me such pause that at the very end, when I had the chance to play the hero I turned tail and ran from the sheer horror of it.

Oh, the beauty.

Railing on Mixotronic

Friday, March 13th, 2009

As part of my continuing self-education in web programming, I’ve decided to take a crack at revamping the venerable Mix-O-Tronic (which is still in quiet existence, by the way) into a Ruby on Rails application.

While I was sketching out the idea in my notebook, I suddenly got a flash of inspiration to use it as a sort of jump-off point for a social site.  Terms are still put together to elicit concepts from people – but users would have the option (if not obligation) to comment on any of the terms (I’m thinking of renaming them ‘phrases’), or the concept as a whole.  When terms come up for other users, they can see the trail of comments that people have left, some other concepts that have been created with them, and so on.  And if a concept comes up for another person, the same applies.

Terms could be added by users (subject to approval, of course) – which would cut down on the workload for keeping it up-to-date and back-cataloging the whole thing, which is still a problem.

I think it would be a very niche (but fun) social site, and pretty straight-forward to code in Rails.  A sort of high-concept pitch machine rolled in the madness of crowds.

In other Mix-O-Tronic news, I have the following books out from the library:

1001 Books to Read Before You Die

1001 Movies to Read Before You Die, and

The Encyclopedia of American Television (1945-2003).

Reading the entry on Benson alone is worth lugging around the last title.

Dollhouse

Saturday, February 21st, 2009

I watched the first episode of Dollhouse last night.  It was very, very good – it’s a testament to Joss’ power as a TV god that he can have a show that hits the ground running like Dollhouse did.   The first entire season of Buffy had a sort of stilted quality to it; Angel had the leg-up of being a spinoff (I think Angel actually declined in quality after all of the Connor shenanigans until Season 5); Firefly hit all the marks but still was wobbly until Our Mrs. Reynolds.  

Dollhouse is solid, through and through.  But it still has issues, the first of which is that Eliza Dushku, while very easy on the eyes and apparently passionate enough to help bankroll the show (she has producer credit), is really … not … that .. good … of an actress.  The first few minutes of the show I just kept thinking ‘what is Faith doing here?’ – her presentation of the in-over-her-head Echo was the same performance as her in-over-her-head evil Faith, and her negotiator persona was completely unbelieveable.  She played it like someone acting like they’re acting like they’re acting.  Which is either brilliant, or bad acting with too much analysis on my part.

The premise is intriguing (and Alias with a sci-fi twist, but never mind that), and of course I’ll follow Joss to the grave.  It was fun to see Commander Lock, Faith the Rogue Slayer, Helo from BSG and Mirage from The Incredibles (the resemblance of Dichan Lachman is UNCANNY) all in the same show.

* * *

And now to the inevitable (at least for me) game idea:

The players are all Actors (are they not?) who work together as a team.  No one has a character sheet to start with – they all get the stock characters for their assigned roles: negotiator from Quantico (I mean, come on …), bad-ass commando, &c., which are in themselves amalgams of other personalities (think of the Personas as LEGOs that get put together instead of single entities).  As they rotate through these personas, they leave a trace behind – those traces start to add up into the true personality of the Actor who’s been wiped.  All of the echos start to become the true voice of the character.  Think of the entire campaign as a character creation.  The echoes (when triggered by another character in the role with the echo), causes first an echo for that character, but also causes a stronger echo in the first character – a sort of positive-feedback loop.

So Character A has the negotiator persona (Persona A) and has a small echo of the wiping process caused by a stressful situation.  That echo (and its cause) stay with the persona.  Character B gets a persona that includes the echo’d bit.  Player B activates the echo (for some positive benefit), and gets their own echo that attaches to Persona A, and meanwhile Player A gets a stronger echo in Persona B; a chain reaction.

State of the Kuma Union

Sunday, February 8th, 2009

I just realized it’s been about two months since I updated (and I dare hope that I’ll be back on the ball with that now), so I’ll start with a major status update. 

I’ve had (two) successful playtests of Terrible World, the story/board game that is based off my entry to Game Chef in 2007.  It’s a boardgame with some roleplaying elements, where the players are four elemental beings shaping the creation of a new world.  One of them has been corrupted by The Adversary, a sort of Cthulhu-esque being who needs a world to be born into the universe on.  The four Anima (as they’re known) are vying for control of the world, but at the same time they’re trying to figure out which one of them is the Adversary before the end of the last age of the world.

I’ve made a lot of refinements to the game: it’s shorter now than originally designed, the resources are much more coherently tied together.  The last big problem that I’m having is that the beginning of the game – the first couple of rounds of play – are very static.  I’m not 100% sure that I need to ‘fix’ it, but it’s still a concern.

I’ve also finished a rather short write-up on a party game called Expressionism, which comes from my own rubbery face.  There’s a deck of cards with things like ‘Eating a cabbage donut’, which each player flips over in turn around the table.  Every player also has a number of cards in their hand with my face emblazoned on them with different expressions.  Each player chooses one that they think is appropriate, including the person who flipped over the card.  The goal is to match the expression you think the currently active player (or ‘flipper’, if you will) is going to make.  Each player who matches gets a point, and the ‘flipper’ gets points for everyone who he matches with.

My next-door neighbor, Andrew, is a phenomenal photographer and hopefully we’ll be collaborating on taking about 300+ hi-res pictures of me making every shade of facial expression that I can manage.

So the two of these things together don’t provide the whole picture of why I haven’t posted.  Since I’m now a housedad, taking care of the little ones, I’ve been selling myself to just about anyone who will stand still long enough to listen.  I’ve landed some freelance graphic design and programming work, and hopefully I’ll also be doing a bunch of web work as well.  The end result is that I’ve been doing a lot more coding lately than writing, and less blogging than writing.  Of course, I’m also Facebooking more than writing as well, so you’d think that I’d have some time to jot down my thoughts for the day.  I’m making a resolution to change this decline, starting today.

But there’s another aspect to the blogslide: The decline of the blogosphere in relation to story-games and the other things that I’ve written about for so long.  There are still some people who are still going strong: Jason Morningstar and Jonathan Walton are two that spring immediately to mind.  But going through my own list of links, more than half are dead or dying.  Maybe people have better things to do – that’s certainly what happened with me.  But there’s a sort of deflationary spiral going on lately that’s not helpful.

So I’m going to re-focus and broaden my blogging here to include a lot more topics from around gaming in general: more boardgames, more video games … always tying it back to my own work and the AGE Model when appropriate.  And in the meantime, I am at T-185 and counting for GenCon Indy.  This means that I likely have T-95 days left before things need to reach printing establishments.  The time for thoughtful reflection on my designs is over, at least for Terrible World and AFTER, the two games I want to have at GenCon.

No way is this Star Trek.

Thursday, November 20th, 2008

I watched the trailer (here).

I had cold chills from the minute I saw ‘Bad Robot’ was involved right up to the end.

May this movie send the Berman Dynasty over the Trek name to the dustbin of history.

This is a Mixotronic wet dream.  Star Trek + Cloverfield + Fringe?  Oh man.

Our National Nightmare is Over.

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008

President-Elect Obama, in Chicago’s Grant Park:

Hello, Chicago.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It’s the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen, by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different, that their voices could be that difference.

It’s the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.

We are, and always will be, the United States of America.

It’s the answer that led those who’ve been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment change has come to America.

A little bit earlier this evening, I received an extraordinarily gracious call from Sen. McCain.

Sen. McCain fought long and hard in this campaign. And he’s fought even longer and harder for the country that he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine. We are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader.

I congratulate him; I congratulate Gov. Palin for all that they’ve achieved. And I look forward to working with them to renew this nation’s promise in the months ahead.

I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart, and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on the train home to Delaware, the vice president-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

And I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last 16 years the rock of our family, the love of my life, the nation’s next first lady Michelle Obama.

Sasha and Malia I love you both more than you can imagine. And you have earned the new puppy that’s coming with us to the new White House.

And while she’s no longer with us, I know my grandmother’s watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight. I know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

To my sister Maya, my sister Alma, all my other brothers and sisters, thank you so much for all the support that you’ve given me. I am grateful to them.

And to my campaign manager, David Plouffe, the unsung hero of this campaign, who built the best — the best political campaign, I think, in the history of the United States of America.

To my chief strategist David Axelrod who’s been a partner with me every step of the way.

To the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what you’ve sacrificed to get it done.

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to. It belongs to you. It belongs to you.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn’t start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington. It began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston. It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give $5 and $10 and $20 to the cause.

It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep.

It drew strength from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on doors of perfect strangers, and from the millions of Americans who volunteered and organized and proved that more than two centuries later a government of the people, by the people, and for the people has not perished from the Earth.

This is your victory.

And I know you didn’t do this just to win an election. And I know you didn’t do it for me.

You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime — two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.

Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us.

There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after the children fall asleep and wonder how they’ll make the mortgage or pay their doctors’ bills or save enough for their child’s college education.

There’s new energy to harness, new jobs to be created, new schools to build, and threats to meet, alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.

I promise you, we as a people will get there.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won’t agree with every decision or policy I make as president. And we know the government can’t solve every problem.

But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And, above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation, the only way it’s been done in America for 221 years — block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

What began 21 months ago in the depths of winter cannot end on this autumn night.

This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.

It can’t happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.

Let us remember that, if this financial crisis taught us anything, it’s that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers.

In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. Let’s resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.

Let’s remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House, a party founded on the values of self-reliance and individual liberty and national unity.

Those are values that we all share. And while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress.

As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, we are not enemies but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.

And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too.

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.

To those — to those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

That’s the true genius of America: that America can change. Our union can be perfected. What we’ve already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that’s on my mind tonight’s about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She’s a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons — because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that she’s seen throughout her century in America — the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can’t, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

At a time when women’s voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs, a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that “We Shall Overcome.” Yes we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination.

And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.

Yes we can.

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves — if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment.

This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.

Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.

~

Yes, we can.  And yes, we did.

AGE Wordle

Monday, September 15th, 2008

Here’s a meme I can get behind.  Wordle creates typographical art out of a document.  I fed in the AGE Model, and got this out:

Play, Imagination and Media

Sunday, March 16th, 2008

It started with this piece from NPR on children’s play. The main thrust of the research presented in the piece is a rather old and cranky piece of wisdom: those darn kids don’t play like we used to.

In a nutshell, the research presents the idea that with the introduction of branded toys and structured playtimes, kids are losing the ability to self-regulate their behavior, and to create and carry out plans (called ‘executive function‘). This lack of executive function is correlated with poor outcomes in education – moreso than a lot of other cognitive functions, like a kid’s ability to read.

The upshot is that a childhood playing with sticks, blocks and other highly neutral toys is better for kids than a childhood playing with Barbie and the Transformers. Cognitively speaking.

A while back I talked about distributed play – the idea that toys possess (or are assigned) roles in play.  By combining different toys in different roles, play emerges.  This is pre-ludic behavior – a child searches for ways to combine toys (or objects, for that matter), forming a set of rules regarding what works and what doesn’t.  Later on, this aids in the assignation of rules to bits and pieces on a game board.

So far, so good.

Where the researcher and I diverge is on the question of whether branded toys carry more or fewer narrative roles.  He would say that the narratives imposed on the toy by the associated media involved would decrease the number of roles a toy could (or perhaps would) take in play, and therefore act as a sort of ‘crutch’ for the child’s executive function.  Toys with more (or more clearly) assigned roles require less ‘work’ for the child’s imagination.

I’m not sure I agree.  Or rather, I agree with the idea, but not the outcome.

Branded toys may offer a narrower range of roles, but I don’t think that necessarily translates into a smaller range of narratives.  A Luke Skywalker action figure might always be Luke Skywalker (my own daughter prefers my vintage Hoth Han Solo), but Luke may find himself robbing banks or chasing after dinosaurs as often as not; activities that are divorced from the specific set of canonical roles adults would assign to Luke.

Furthermore, I’d say that there’s a skill is that is just as important for kids today to gain: media negotiation.  No matter how insulated we were to make our kids when they’re young, unless you’re Amish they are eventually going to enter a society awash in media.  Learning to negotiate that media, to manipulate and gain mastery over it (as opposed to letting it master you), is important.  Play with branded toys, I believe, simply shifts some of the skill development over into this new area – an area that will (hopefully) make our kids much more savvy media consumers than we are ourselves.

There’s one in every crowd.

Thursday, March 6th, 2008

Matt Snyder doesn’t give a crap that Gary Gygax is dead.

Well, at least not in the abstract – he’s not inhuman, after all. But he doesn’t see the point in giving Gygax the credit being lauded him in various remembrances, obituaries and eulogies. Eulogies being delivered, by the way, by such media darlings as Stephen Colbert, no less.

There are more fiery paragraphs, but I’ll quote the end:

We laughed. But, you know? He’s right. Clinging to Gary so you, the self-conscious gamer, can avoid feeling alone and awkward in your nerd shame is giving Gary a lot more credit than he deserves. You and your friends earned that by what you did. Gary didn’t even order the pizza for Christ’s sake.

He made a fun game. He had a life and a family and did lots of stuff. He died. He was just a guy from Wisconsin. Ok? Ok.

I’m not half as sad that Gary died as I am sad that the hobby still defines itself as a lifestyle rather than as an activity.

As the author of Nine Worlds and Dust Devils, among others, you’d think that Snyder would, at least, be able to acknowledge the debt that he has to Gygax and the rest who came after him for the creation of the hobby that he has, at least marginally, profited from. Gygax is, at least in the realm of the RPG, one of the giants on whose shoulders we all stand, to borrow a phrase. I’m assuming that there’s a tacit acknowledgement there, but if there isn’t, then Matt needs a serious reality check. Yes, we’d all be “doing something else” – but we’re not, and Snyder isn’t.

The broader question that I’d like to explore is the entanglement of RPGs as ‘activity’ and RPGs (and gaming) as ‘lifestyle’. Snyder finds it sad that people identify this closely with gaming and RPGs. I can only imagine that I’m one of the people that makes him sad, since my second-to-last blog post states very clearly that I believe that D&D, and the creative outlet of RPGs in general, saved me from doing something stupid with my life when I was 13 – either ending it, or wasting it on drugs or some other, far darker, ‘lifestyle’.

Why this is a surprise to Snyder is a mystery to me. Games, and RPGs in particular, are a quintessentially social medium. You can’t (I’ll qualify this as ‘couldn’t', actually, since I’m sure it’s possible now with CRPGs and MMOs) play an RPG without being immersed in a miasma of social interaction with your fellow players. Even if it isn’t the explicit, tree-hugging ‘the system is within us and without us’ notion of the indie scene, RPGs require the formation, manipulation and exposition of social discourse among the players. In other words, even if you’re an asocial bastard, you still have to meet your fellow players in a space somewhere outside yourself in order to facilitate play. If you don’t, you’re not going to be playing for long.

Mix this together with the identity play that is the core of the RPG experience, the ‘I am Giigor Redweave, Rug Merchant to the Sultan of Zum’ transference that takes place during the course of play, and you have a heady concoction ripe for transference of all kinds. Including the incorporation of the idea of ‘gamer’ into the idea of oneself. Apparently, Matt’s never made that kind of transference, and that’s all well and good. But for a great many people, perhaps socially or physically isolated from people who shared their interests at a critical juncture in the formation of their personal identity, made that connection with a something, with a percieved ‘someone’, even if that someone was a fantasy character of their own device.

Now, I will be the first to say that I think that game (and RPG) culture has its flaws. They are legion. But I don’t see Mr. Snyder’s refutation of the impact of Gary Gygax’s work on the lives of those of us who played, still play, and have embraced the game as part of their identity as separate from this culture. Instead, it rings to me as exactly the sort of myopic, unempathetic, asocial caricature that Matt Snyder wants to divorce himself from.

Instead of dismissing it, I think that we can take a look at the grief being expressed in the gaming community and try to take from it some lessons on the power of playing with identity and community – a power that I think gets taken for granted in game design.

[cross-posted to Story Games]

E. Gary Gygax : 1938-2008

Thursday, March 6th, 2008

There are plenty of posts circulating out on the web about Mr.Gygax’s death and people’s moments with him. This post is a bit different than all of those, because my single (direct) interaction with the man was confrontational, if not negative.

I reviewed the World Builder, by Troll Lord Games, and I panned it. Severely. Probably more than it tuly deserved. Since his name was attached to the series, Mr. Gygax was pointed towards the review over on ENWorld (or as I like to call it, the House that d20 Built). What transpired was a relatively terse conversation of a few posts, followed by the general sentiment of ‘oh well, let’s get on with life’.

Sometime after that review, I moved to Wisconsin and spent an afternoon wandering around Lake Geneva looking for Gary’s house. I found it, and even though I could tell he was home, and even though he famously welcomed wandering geeks like myself to sit down for a few.

So here’s what I should have said to the man that day in Lake Geneva: Thank you.  Not only did the game you helped create change my life, it has guided it ever since.  It’s also not much of a stretch for me to say that your game saved my life.  The 7th and 8th grades were not kind to me.  Braces, acne and a curve-busting IQ marked me as an outsider in my small, rural town.  Without the diversion and the mental floss that D&D and its brethren provided me, I may not have made it to the 9th grade, when things got much better.  I was alone, and yet I wasn’t.  I felt a kinship with gamers all over the country (or the world) who I knew were delving into the same rich well of imagination that I lived in.

Thank you for my Fortress of Solitude.

Captain Jack Sparrow

Friday, December 21st, 2007

Just saw Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.

The entire setting is very evocative, but this final film frankly drips with inspiration for a pirate game.  Just one mechanical idea: Your pirate’s special abilities depends on which of the nine Pirate Lords you owe allegiance to.

Modeling Jack Sparrow well in an RPG, capturing his essence: a decathalon-like challenge.

Guitar Hero Master (and Immersion) at Work

Friday, November 9th, 2007

http://www.megavideo.com/?v=BEE2472P

I don’t play myself (I tried a few songs at Sam’s Club when I saw the game there and did OK for a beginner.) But such awesome skill at a game deserves mention here.

On a more ‘let’s talk about game theory’ note, watch the player’s face as he’s playing. He’s gone. He’s inside the game – at one with it, even. This is the much-vaunted immersion that people are often trying to quantify. As I’ve posted before, the central act of immersion is the sublimation of the self into the game state. You can see that here very easily: it’s as though Conrad’s fingers were made to play those insane notes.

Game your Gov’t

Wednesday, October 31st, 2007

I just stumbled onto Fantasy Congress.  It’s a fantasy sports league aimed at the the political junkie crowd (aka me).  In about ten minutes, I scoped out a public league and picked a solid lineup of Dems with a couple of home favorites (Feingold and Baldwin in the Senate and House respectively) and a couple of curveballs (rookie Republican senators in districts where I’ve lived before).

Your lineup competes against the other members of the league on a few different points: legislation introduced or co-sponsored,  attendance, their Maverick score (whether they vote against the party line when it counts), and soon based on news coverage, both local and national.

As I’ve said before, gaming both needs to penetrate new territory (genre-wise) in order to grow as an art form, and that gaming is a tool useful in just about every aspect of life.  If playing in a fantasy league gets people engaged in the political process, so be it.

If anyone wants to join me, I’m in the Public Pick ‘Em League 162.

Gametap, Capitalism and Capitalism II

Tuesday, September 11th, 2007

My other big game outlet of late has been Gametap. Seeing as how I’ll poke around with just about any game to see what about it is worthwhile, this is a great service. $9.95 a month gets me 971 games at my fingertips – everything from Atari 2600 and arcade favorites to current near-hits.

Notice that I said ‘near-hits’. While Gametap offers things like Overlord, which earned a 91% from PC Gamer and similar reviews, the vast majority of PC titles on Gametap a B-list, and more than a few are C-list games. I did a random sample of PC games with reviews available through gamerankings.com – the average was 68% – not exactly stellar. Of course, that’s to be expected for $9.95 a month – give people access to 971 games, but don’t break the bank by paying for royalties on big-ticket items. That way, Gametap can offer a small revenue stream for old and/or bargain bin titles.

This model was decried (most notably by Greg Costikyan) when it first came out, but I don’t see the same downside that he does. The games that you find on Gametap aren’t the best and the brightest – even with games that are 10+ years old, there are a lot of titles that aren’t on Gametap. Furthermore, Gametap is funding new indie games and providing them with a much broader audience at a reduced ‘burn’ threshold. Part of the trouble with indie games is that they’re very hard to judge, quality-wise. I’ve been burned on more than one, but I’ve also found some seriously good games (like Gish). With Gametap, I can experiment without feeling like I’m running a big risk – which even at $20 a pop is not unappreciable in my world.

This segues nicely into me playing the 2001 title Capitalism II, a tycoon-class game where you’re in charge of a multi-million dollar corporation. Afterplaying through the Entrepreneur campaign (essentially, a tutorial) and starting on a few custom games, I became thoroughly disturbed. I’m apparently not cut out to be a world-dominating imperial mogul – not because I did poorly at the game, but because the game’s engine is far too simplistic. The economic world, as portrayed in Captialism II, has no downside, other than possibly shooting your own stock price in the foot. Pollution is non-existant, factory farming is de rigeur. Shutting down all of your plants and moving to another city doesn’t hurt your reputation. Consumers are measured on only two axes: brand loyalty and the amount of money they spend.

After thoroughly crushing the competition with Microsoftian tactics in a tech startup campaign, it really started to hit me exactly how maniacally profit-driven my thinking was in the game. Total ruthlessness and monopolization were expected by the game’s goals, but I had also internalized those goals to a high degree: I *wanted* to gain 100% domination of the marketplace.

The whole experience has spurred some thinking along the lines of the relationship between player and goal – which I’ll elaborate more on tomorrow.

DEAD Again & Other Things

Thursday, July 19th, 2007

Well crap. That didn’t work.

I can’t make excuses for that lapse. All I can say is that by now, I’ve lost just about everyone that I had to start with. Well, I’ve started from zero before, so I can do it again. What I won’t do is spend an entire post grousing about not posting.

* *

DEAD has had a couple of playtests, and now I’m in the process of re-writing the rules. One of the things I never realized about a game like this is just how much radical change goes on. DEAD is nothing like it was in the last iteration – or at least very little like it. Much of the change has to do with simplicity – I shaved off lots of rules that I put in to satisfy some sort of hold-over ideas about balance and character survivability. The name of the game is DEAD, fer chrissakes. Survivability shouldn’t be on the menu.

Another radical change has come from the Kumawife – she handed me a solution to designing a game with 250+ cards in it: lo-fi prototyping.

Instead of spending a lot of time in Illustrator making cards, I’ve simply made a whole passel of bits and pieces – the numbers, the card labels and the backgrounds. Then I print out an armload of them, cut them out, and paste together a set of cards that can be changed ad hoc. The only parts that I need to make individually are the rule text, which I can print out in a simple Excel doc.

So that’s a great improvement.

* * *

I’ve done a little purchasing in my time off – my central purchase is a copy of Greg Stolze’s REIGN. I can’t believe how … how Elsewhere the ORE System has become in this iteration. Stolze treats the dice in a very manipulative manner, with verbs like gobble and squish for the mechanics. Brilliant, and I haven’t even gotten to the meat of the system yet. More as I read it.

* * * *

Finally – a new trend that I’ve noticed in the Story Games blogosphere: proliferation. Folks don’t just have one blog – they have one for every project, plus projects with other people. Witness the Play Collective and the constellation of blogs belonging to Johnathan Walton. I think I may have to get myself some of those.